East Liberty :Buzz

In an article last week, U.K. newspaper The Guardian asked its 9 million international daily readers: What can East Liberty teach us about the transformative power of regeneration?

The article, "How community-led renovation is helping a rundown Pittsburgh neighbourhood fight crime," focuses on the work of East Liberty Development Inc. (ELDI) for its efforts to revitalize and redevelop the East End community.

The article chronicles ELDI’s 1999 launch and ongoing investments to end the worsening crime and resident vulnerability, the organization's strategic purchase of real estate in the neighborhood's most dangerous blocks and the redevelopment of those properties into stable low-cost and market-value housing.

The article also underscored East Liberty's the drop in crime, citing the results of a Numeritics study. The Pittsburgh consulting firm was commissioned by ELDI to track the incidence of crime against the sites where the group had intervened.

“Between 2008 and 2012, serious crimes against persons -- aggravated assault, homicide, rape and robbery -- decreased by 54 percent in East Liberty’s residential areas. Total crime -- including property crimes and crimes reported in the commercial center of East Liberty -- dropped from 221 crimes per thousand residents in 2008 to 164 crimes per thousand residents in 2012.”

Teen filmmakers, poets, step dancers, performers and photographers from Homewood will share their talents on stage at the Kelly Strayhorn Theatre tonight at 6 p.m. as part of an end-of-year celebration for the YMCA Lighthouse Project.

The YMCA Lighthouse Project is an after-school program at Westinghouse Academy, a low-performing high school in Homewood. Despite the high dropout rate at Westinghouse, every Lighthouse Project participant goes on to graduate from high school, according to a press release from the YMCA.

"I love this city. There, I said it. Every five years I make a pilgrimage to my college reunion in nearby Westmoreland County, and every five years I stop here and discover another reason — or three or four — to fall in love again.

You may have heard about Pittsburgh’s success story of the 1990s: Steel mills close, waterfront develops, high-tech and research businesses flourish. But after the economic calamities of the past five years, pockets of town were and are suffering. Yet this is Pittsburgh — scrappy, energetic, entrepreneurial — and so I wasn’t surprised to learn it’s actively reclaiming its abandoned places.

I spent three days exploring two neighborhoods humming with growth and energy: East Liberty (locals call it “Sliberty”) and the Downtown Cultural District."

"...Rubin and Weleski are used to head-scratching reactions since they opened the Conflict Kitchen, a Pittsburgh cafe that serves cuisine only from countries in conflict with the United States, with a menu that rotates to reflect the war or diplomatic row of the moment.

"The cafe opened in 2010, with Iranian food the first featured cuisine. That was followed by periods of Afghan and Venezuelan food. This month, in a sign of the lingering tension between Washington and Tehran, the Conflict Kitchen is wrapping up another Iranian iteration. One recent Saturday, it featured a Persian dinner party attended by customers in Pittsburgh and diners in Tehran, who were linked via video chat."

The Leadership Pittsburgh class XVIII is advocating for Pittsburgh's Main Streets, which are facing budget cuts, when they head to Harrisburg soon in a day long session to meet legislators. In preparation and with help from the URA, the class took tours of eight Main St. neighborhoods, from West End to East Liberty and shared their impressions in this article.

"Participants said it was an eye-opening day and an education in the challenges of urban neighborhood development."

CS Monitor recently looked at
Conflict Kitchen in East Liberty's second iteration, Bolani Pazi. The
piece explores the ways in which Bolani Pazi attempts to engage the
public, via its collective stomach, in a dialogue about Afghanistan's
culture, within the sphere of the contemporary geopolitical situation.

The New York Times reports that the slumbering East Liberty neighborhood is reawakening.

In the 1950s, the neighborhood was the state's third-largest shopping district behind Center City Philadelphia and Downtown Pittsburgh. However, urban renewal schemes like high-rise public housing and ring roads drove the area into a "40-year coma." Now, the area is seeing a rise in economic attention. Mosites Company's Eastside and Eastside II developments have introduced Whole Foods, Walgreen's and Borders to the area; a 145,000-square-foot Target is set to take the place of a demolished public housing building; and the Bakery Square office and retail project has landed Google as its anchor tenant.

Sabina Deitrick, a co-director of the Urban and Regional Analysis Program at the University of Pittsburgh, says East Liberty's fortunes finally seem to be on the rise. "Pittsburgh grows so slowly that gentrification means something different here," she says. "The recent stages of development could be a way to reunite neighborhoods that were separated by urban renewal."

Sonja Finn, chef and owner of East Liberty's Dinette, is in the running for a James Beard Award, a top national culinary honor.

Finn has been announced as a semifinalist in the "rising star chef" category, against the likes of Kevin Gillespie, a runner-up from season six of Bravo's Top Chef.

Dinette focuses on local, seasonal and organic pizza and wine, and is located at 5996 Penn Circle South.

The James Beard Foundation's Restaurant and Chef Committee selected the nominees from 21,000 online entries. An independent volunteer panel of more than 400 judges from across the country will vote on specific award categories to determine the final five nominees in each category. Those nominees will be announced on March 22, following which the same panel of judges will pick the winners, announced at the foundation's annual gala on Monday, May 3, 2010 at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall.

Dinette's chef and owner Sonja Finn has been named a "top 40 chef under 40" by the Mother Nature Network. The chefs in this list were honored for not just their food, but also for their commitment to sustainability. Other big names include Jose Garces (the newest Iron Chef), Kevin Gillespie (a top-performing contestant on this season of Bravo's Top Chef) and the assistant chef at the White House.

Dinette's Finn made the No. 10 spot on the list of 40.

Finn started as a prep cook and garde manger at Baum Vivant in Pittsburgh., worked at restaurants across the country, and returned to Pittsburgh in April 2008 to work on her own pizza-and-wine place, Dinette, which opened in East Liberty in October of that year.

Dinette embraces sustainability through recycling, energy-efficient appliances and local, seasonal, organic ingredients. Also, employees are paid a living wage and are eligible for health insurance benefits.

Two Pittsburgh companies, deepLocal and Electric Owl Studios, are profiled in a Primer magazine article about the next generation of businessmen--artists.

Both Carnegie Mellon University spinoffs, which run out the Liberty Bank Building, a no wall productions property in East Liberty, promote creative culture, collaboration and passion above the kind of business savvy taught in a classroom, say CEOs Nathan Martin of deepLocal and Fred Gallart of Electric Owl.